Burma’s tourism minister has called for hotel prices to be regulated ahead of the 2013 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games in December or risk derailing the country’s nascent tourism industry.

Hotel and Tourism Minister Htay Aung recently warned that the current trend of rising hotel prices in Burma’s commercial capital could put people off from attending the games as well as deter future tourists.

“Raising [accommodation] prices during the SEA Games could prevent tourists from visiting in the future,” said the minister.

“There are many new hotels that will open in Rangoon by the end of this year and the charges need to be regulated.”

According to one tourism operator, if the issue went unaddressed potential visitors might reconsider attending the games.

“Hotel operators think there will be a lot of tourists visiting, but don’t realise they actually won’t if the prices are this high,” said Aye Kyaw, owner of Rubyland Tourism Services.

“This will destroy the tourism sector and the hotel operators are going to be the ones responsible for that.”

According to a report published in the English edition of The New Light of Myanmar on 7 June, the government is in the process of cooperating with hotels and tour operators to address the problem.

“Regarding the recent high room prices, the ministry is making coordination [sic] between the tourism companies and the hotels and educating the hoteliers to balance prices and services and to offer full services to the foreign guests,” read the report.

During the World Economic Forum in Naypyidaw last week, the Burmese and Norwegian governments along with the Asian Development Bank announced the implementation of a half billion-dollar tourism master plan.

The new money aims to address the country’s woefully undeveloped infrastructure that languished after decades of international isolation and tourism boycotts supported by human rights groups.

More than 30 development projects will be completed in accordance with the master plan, including the building of new roads and expanding arrival terminals at the country’s airports.

As the Burma’s continues to open up during its nascent reform period, the number of tourists visiting the former pariah has soared; however, due to the lack hotels in the country prices have gone through the roof.

Although officials have boasted that more than a million tourists visited Burma in 2012, only 559,610 travellers arrived in Rangoon, while more than 400,000 people entered the country for day trips at Thai border crossings.

In May, the Minister Aung Htay said the government was hoping to have three million tourists visit the country by 2015.

However, experts have questioned whether the massive push to increase the number of visitors was sustainable in the impoverished country.

“I think it’s very difficult to have responsible tourism when the aim is to have three million tourists by 2015,” said Andrea Valentin, founder of Tourism Transparency.

“We have to develop that number sustainably. I don’t know if that number can be reached in a sustainable way.”

According to statistics compiled by the Burmese government in 2012, there are more than 28,000 rooms available at the 787 hotels operating across the country.

3 Comments

Hotel industry must be regulated. Because it is not independent of the wellbeing of the state and society of Burma.
“Unregulated, anarchical operations of hoteliers, with myopic view of short-term profits, call kill off the goose that lays golden egg,” declared HM King schwebomin II of Burma.
1.Health and safety and secutiry of the guests must be guaranteed by hoteliers. Government must have an agency to deal with this area.
2. Employees must be treated fairly: working conditions, including working hours, rest time, mental and physical welfare, healthy and safety, disciplinary procedures, right to appeal, unfair dissimal etc. must be the topics to be included in the discussion. Government must appoint employment tribunals. Seek advice from HM King shwebomin II, who had extensively studied Industrial Relations in MBA in Management of a top British university business school.
The right to strike, closed shop, union membership, non-discrimination are also the issues.

3. Hotel industry needs to develop in Myanmar Kingdom: no doubt about it. Educationa dn training are crucial. Again President U thein-Sein must takes directives from His Majesty, who has extensive experience in the area.

We, European councillors support His Majesty, Burmese/Myanmar government, parliament and royal armed forces known as ‘Tatmataw, pronounced Tatmadaw.

In Singapore, all hotels have to submit a daily average room rate to the hotel association and they interm inform the tourism board. Tourism board ( quasi government ) will advise some hotels who are overcharging tourists as control measures. There are some regulations to control it for the long term benefits for the tourism and the hotels. We trust that Burma can do something similar of it by ownself or copy it anyway.